Let me preface
this. (If this is not okay, then… I don’t know.
I’m gonna preface this. Deal with
it. *elaborate hand gesture*) I don’t speak for every
paraprofessional. Even more than that, I
don’t speak for every person who has special needs, every parent or family
member of a person who has special needs…
I don’t speak for every human being.
I may always be right, but I’m not here to stomp on anyone’s feels and I
don’t know what it’s like to be x, y, and z.
I do know how it feels to be me.
And, in the grand concert of living this ‘being me’ thing, I want to tell you about being inspired. First off, I grew up with my formative years in the nineties, a generation of people who were already bored of everything that the 80s had to throw at it- including shoulder pads and crotch stuffing. We listened to Smashing Pumpkins vocalizing profound apathy while carrying a paper bag in our hands on the way to elementary school. I may not have seen it all, but I damn might as well. So, when the topic of inspiration comes up, often I vocally make an ‘eh’ sound without even realizing it.
Sometimes right in front of a motivational speaker as they’re trying to motivate me. Yes. That actually happened.
As a para-educator, I get to see all the corny 80s movies about introducing the concept of autism to the general populace, often colored in this Technicolor over-animated vision of hope and triumph. A general theme of positivity outlines the single message “Look at this person with x, y, and z! They’re doing this thing even though they have these PROBLEMS. I feel like, as a person without x, y, and z, that I can do ANYTHING. That person is a hero!” And, as many people deigned to be heroes, they then have their humanity stolen from them, and are set up to be a symbol of sorts. A symbol of SPIRIT and POSITIVITY and PERSEVERANCE and blah blah blah.
I do know how it feels to be me.
And, in the grand concert of living this ‘being me’ thing, I want to tell you about being inspired. First off, I grew up with my formative years in the nineties, a generation of people who were already bored of everything that the 80s had to throw at it- including shoulder pads and crotch stuffing. We listened to Smashing Pumpkins vocalizing profound apathy while carrying a paper bag in our hands on the way to elementary school. I may not have seen it all, but I damn might as well. So, when the topic of inspiration comes up, often I vocally make an ‘eh’ sound without even realizing it.
Sometimes right in front of a motivational speaker as they’re trying to motivate me. Yes. That actually happened.
As a para-educator, I get to see all the corny 80s movies about introducing the concept of autism to the general populace, often colored in this Technicolor over-animated vision of hope and triumph. A general theme of positivity outlines the single message “Look at this person with x, y, and z! They’re doing this thing even though they have these PROBLEMS. I feel like, as a person without x, y, and z, that I can do ANYTHING. That person is a hero!” And, as many people deigned to be heroes, they then have their humanity stolen from them, and are set up to be a symbol of sorts. A symbol of SPIRIT and POSITIVITY and PERSEVERANCE and blah blah blah.
And like every hero, suddenly their problems don’t
matter. “I mean yeah, it sucks to have
CancerAIDS, but you were able to catch every Pokemon, and since I, a normal
person, wish I could do it, you’re practically invincible!” Because the story of the made-for-TV-movie
had the actor succeed in this Herculean trial, THERE IS NO MORE CANCERAIDS AND
EVERYONE LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
Not only does it diminish the actor’s problems, which very likely continue to be a huge problem on a very personal, day-to-day basis, but it give those people who have no experience with working with those who have disabilities an out for how to act around people with those disabilities when they don’t know and they’re feeling the ‘normie’ version of White-Guilt. “Well, I’ve never dealt with a person with CancerAIDS before, and after watching that movie, I learned that EVERYONE with CancerAIDS is a HERO!” Suddenly, you’ve got this crowd of over-sympathetic persons acting like they just met a cute puppy for the first time.
And that doesn’t even touch on the media representation of people with Down’s Syndrome or Autism being represented as this mystical, magical future seers who hack into the government every single day.
Not only does it diminish the actor’s problems, which very likely continue to be a huge problem on a very personal, day-to-day basis, but it give those people who have no experience with working with those who have disabilities an out for how to act around people with those disabilities when they don’t know and they’re feeling the ‘normie’ version of White-Guilt. “Well, I’ve never dealt with a person with CancerAIDS before, and after watching that movie, I learned that EVERYONE with CancerAIDS is a HERO!” Suddenly, you’ve got this crowd of over-sympathetic persons acting like they just met a cute puppy for the first time.
And that doesn’t even touch on the media representation of people with Down’s Syndrome or Autism being represented as this mystical, magical future seers who hack into the government every single day.
Alright. That’s a
pretty good preface, right?
I was inspired once.
I KNOW, even I have had a time
in my life where something outside of my own doing made me feel stronger as a
person. It was this time I was
substituting at a school, and it was Disability Awareness Week. Usually this time is used to discuss people
around us, and rarely include us, or on the other side of the spectrum, it
involves conspicuously including us as a school-wide show-and-tell project,
only to be forgotten the next week. If I
remember correctly, we were running up the former at the time.
At the end of each of the days that week, they’d have some group come in and give a presentation. The other days were not memorable, but one afternoon they had to clear the gymnasium ahead of schedule to prepare for the activity. When we got there, we saw that the front of the gym had been cleared, making a basketball court and an audience.
At the end of each of the days that week, they’d have some group come in and give a presentation. The other days were not memorable, but one afternoon they had to clear the gymnasium ahead of schedule to prepare for the activity. When we got there, we saw that the front of the gym had been cleared, making a basketball court and an audience.
A state school’s wheelchair basketball team (by the by,
probably legitimately the coolest, most dangerous sport I’ve ever seen. The guys don’t hold back, and it ends up
looking like a cross between basketball and Battle Bots) came in to show off
their skills and tell us what they did.
They wowed the crowd with how rough they played, and how controlled
their actions were- racing within inches of students and stopping quickly. They were playing to the crowd in a very
Harlem Globetrotters sort of way. They
described what caused some of the teammates to end up in wheelchairs, and
discussed how basketball wheelchairs were different than traditional ones.
And then they invited the teachers to come play with them. At first, there was the usual cheering and whatnot, where classrooms felt personally involved when their teacher was called up. There was some laughter as the teachers got used to the wheelchairs, and were obviously not used to controlling them. After a few minutes, the teachers lined up to the starting positions, against the state school’s team.
And for a moment, that was it. I don’t think anyone knew what they were feeling at the time, and if they did, they hadn’t picked a side to cheer for. But there was this hanging moment between when everyone was getting used to what they were seeing and what happened next. It was at this very moment, that something happened that made me really inspired for the school, and for the special needs community.
The students started cheering against the college-level wheelchair basketball team.
They shouted for their teachers’ success, and when the opposing team made a basket with complete ease, sometimes running literal circles around the teachers on the court, they booed. For a moment, after all the platitudes of Disability Awareness Week, these elementary school students didn’t see a group of inferior individuals they needed to feel poorly for, they didn’t see a group of heroes they needed to praise for simply existing, they didn’t see a group of people who existed only to provide a life-lesson about never taking what you have for granted.
They saw a threat to the people they cared for, albeit a threat over honor and prestige rather than physical and immediate. They saw challengers from outside showing up people that they knew. They saw an opposing team that was obviously better at something than their own teachers.
They didn’t see a group of people with disabilities. They saw a group of people- a group of professionals at that.
And for a moment, my heart fluttered.
And then they invited the teachers to come play with them. At first, there was the usual cheering and whatnot, where classrooms felt personally involved when their teacher was called up. There was some laughter as the teachers got used to the wheelchairs, and were obviously not used to controlling them. After a few minutes, the teachers lined up to the starting positions, against the state school’s team.
And for a moment, that was it. I don’t think anyone knew what they were feeling at the time, and if they did, they hadn’t picked a side to cheer for. But there was this hanging moment between when everyone was getting used to what they were seeing and what happened next. It was at this very moment, that something happened that made me really inspired for the school, and for the special needs community.
The students started cheering against the college-level wheelchair basketball team.
They shouted for their teachers’ success, and when the opposing team made a basket with complete ease, sometimes running literal circles around the teachers on the court, they booed. For a moment, after all the platitudes of Disability Awareness Week, these elementary school students didn’t see a group of inferior individuals they needed to feel poorly for, they didn’t see a group of heroes they needed to praise for simply existing, they didn’t see a group of people who existed only to provide a life-lesson about never taking what you have for granted.
They saw a threat to the people they cared for, albeit a threat over honor and prestige rather than physical and immediate. They saw challengers from outside showing up people that they knew. They saw an opposing team that was obviously better at something than their own teachers.
They didn’t see a group of people with disabilities. They saw a group of people- a group of professionals at that.
And for a moment, my heart fluttered.
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